This post is part of a media project called SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage. Pick a number, and consider the list of athletes attached to it. Who wore it best? Or, what’s the most compelling story linked to it? Any person, place or thing is in play with Southern California connections. Star power, transformational achievement, longevity, notoriety and quirkiness all factor in. Whatever leads to a lively discussion and interpretation.
The most obvious choices for No. 49:
Charlie Hough: Los Angeles Dodgers
Tom Niedenfuer: Los Angeles Dodgers
Dennis Smith: USC football
Charles Phillips: USC football
Carson Schwesinger: UCLA football
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 49:
Marvcus Patton: UCLA football
The most interesting story for No. 49:
Marvcus Patton, UCLA football linebacker (1985 to 1989) via Leuzinger High of Lawndale (1980 to 1984)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Inglewood, Lawndale, Westwood
Reference books on the subject:
“Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League,” by Francie de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D’Arcangelo, 2021
“Women’s American Football: Breaking Barriers On and Off the Gridiron,” by Russ Crawford, 2022
“Gridiron Invasion: The Hidden History of Women’s Football,” by Katie Taylor, 2026
on the day UCLA’s football program accepted him as a relatively undersized walk-on linebacker in the fall of 1985, Marvcus Patton could only imagine how proud his father might have been.
His dad specifically gave him the name Marvcus, with the extra “V.” Pronounced MARV-cuss. It was in honor of the Roman emperor and warrior Marcus Aurelius. Marcus comes from the name Mars, the god of war.
“As it turns out, he turned into a warrior on the football field,” his mother, Barbara, told the Los Angeles Times in a 1989 story as her son was about to enter his final collegiate season and consider what kind of future he might have as a professional.
As it also turns out, Barbara was far more influential in Marvcus’ ascent into a football life than anyone else.
She played the game. And very well at that.
Marvcus’ father, Raymond Hicks, never saw him play. Hicks was a Los Angeles Police undercover detective shot and killed in the line of duty during a drug bust when Marvcus was 9. Raymond Hicks had been separated from Barbara for some time at that point, eventually remarried and started another family.
Barbara managed as a single mom of two children, working as a PBX operation for the federal government’s General Services Administration in L.A. That was her Monday-to-Friday job. On weeknights and Saturdays, she operated full tilt as a linebacker for the Los Angeles Dandelions of the National Women’s Football League.
No flag-grabbing here. Helmets, shoulder pads, extra-thick padding up front. Full on contact. For $25 a day, which sometimes happened, sometimes not.
Like mother, like son. A unique dynamic that likely hasn’t happened anywhere else except here.
“I thought it was really cool to tell my friends that my mom was a linebacker,” Marvus Patton once shared. “My mom’s love for the game definitely influenced me. I always watched football on television and collected football cards, but seeing my mom play really made me want to be in the NFL.”
The son’s story
As the Pioneer League defensive MVP at Leuzinger High in Lawndale in 1984, Marvcus Patton had only one college scholarship offer, from San Diego State. Cal State Fullerton, which had a program on its last legs, seemed to have interest. It didn’t matter. Patton’s first choice was UCLA.
As a high school junior, Patton stood 5-foot-11 and just 133 pounds. By his senior year, he got up to 165 via the weight room. Even if his college choices were were limited, academics mattered most.
“I would have come regardless of whether I was going to play football or not, because UCLA is a prestigious academic school,” said Patton, who had a 3.9 grade-point average and made it into on scholastic merit. At Leuzinger, he had already completed upper-division classes as a freshman and sophomore and was practically able to graduate before his senior season.
Steve Carnes, Patton’s coach at Leuzinger, connected with UCLA assistant Ted Williams and arranged for Patton to get an invite to walk on.
“I really didn’t think Marvcus was recruitable,” Carnes said. “But he was such an outstanding student I thought he should go to UCLA and get a great education even if he didn’t play football. Since then he has worked extremely hard to become what he is. All the kids at Leuzinger look up to him.”
After participating on the freshman scout team, Patton made it into the Bruins’ lineup by his sophomore year. He had put on more than 30 pounds but maintained his speed that set him apart on special teams.
Patton said a career highlight was intercepting a pass in UCLA’s 41-28 win over Nebraska in 1988.
By the time he hit his fifth-year senior season, at 6-foot-2 and 222 pounds, Patton earned the nickname “General” from his teammates. Maybe because they couldn’t get past the Marcus-Marvcus hurdle.
“Marcus, Marvcus, whatever, General Patton is a great success story,” UCLA head coach Terry Donahue would say. “He’s a true model of a player who came from virtually being unknown and worked himself all the way up to the top of the program.”
Marc Dellins, the longtime UCLA senior associate athletic director heading the sports information office, recalled the time when the Bruins played in the 1989 Cotton Bowl at the end of Patton’s junior season. All the players received bolo ties with a replica of the Cotton Bowl logo. The name spelled on Patton’s tie was “Marvcus.” Dellins noticed it and quickly told Patton he could get that fixed.
“That’s when he tells me it was spelled correctly,” said Dellins. “I realized for almost two seasons we had been spelling his first name wrong. I asked him why he didn’t say anything, and he said he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I said: ‘That’s your name, you can make a big deal out of it’.”
Consequently, whenever his mother ever got annoyed with him, she said she might call him “MAR-cus.” Normally, it was just “Marc.”
UCLA stumbled through a 3-7-1 record in 1989, starting the year ranked No. 6 but falling out of the Top 25 by mid season. Four of their losses were by three points or less. They salvaged some dignity by earning a 10-10 tie against No. 8 USC in the season finale. The Bruins, who went winless the last six weeks of the season, had their worst performance in 10 seasons. Patton’s final year still was an individual accomplishment — he set a school record with 22 tackles behind the line of scrimmage and was third in the conference with 11 sacks.
Donahue noted Patton “played with great heart and competitiveness. He’s really had a good year despite the fact the team has not. I certainly think on a different team and a different set of circumstances, he’d really receive a tremendous amount of recognition and notoriety for his play.”
Patton was as proud of the fact teammates named him the co-MVP as he was having a political science degree on his resume.
It wasn’t until the eighth round of the 1990 NFL draft before Buffalo took a chance on taking Patton, making him the 208th pick overall. Patton said he felt like he was a walk-on all over again.
“When you have that feeling that everyone’s against you and they don’t think you can get it done, it gives you a little extra drive,” Patton said. “I’ve always felt that I had to prove myself.”
Patton not only earned a Bills’ roster spot but played in all 16 games. But he suffered a broken leg on the opening kickoff of the AFC Divisional playoff game against Miami and ended his rookie season.
A full-time starter by his fourth season as a left inside linebacker, Patton put in five productive seasons in Buffalo, including four straight AFC titles and Super Bowl trips. When the Bills played in Super Bowl XXVII against Dallas and former UCLA teammate Troy Aikman in 1993, Patton was back on the Rose Bowl field.
Traded to Washington and moved to middle linebacker, Patton led the team in tackles three times and had a career best 143 with 115 solo tackles in 1998. After a Redskins’ 14-point loss to Tampa Bay in 1996, Patton was quoted as saying: “We played like babies. We didn’t tackle. We didn’t chase down people. We let it slip away.”
His final four seasons in Kansas City was him named a team MVP in his first season when he had 135 tackles, after landing a six-year contract said to be worth $10.1 million. At age 35 in his final season with the Chiefs, Patton had two interceptions (giving him 17 for his career) and two fumble recoveries (giving him 12). He scored his only NFL touchdown on a 24-yard interception return in 2000.
An NFL career that spanned 204 games over 13 seasons also is noteworthy in that Patton never missed a regular season game. Only one other defensive player picked in that 1990 NFL draft — Hall of Famer Junior Seau out of USC, No. 5 overall — played more than the 208 NFL games that Patton did in their careers.
Patton was done from pro football right about the same age as his mom did back in her playing days.
The mom’s story
Running back is where Barbara Patton always thought her son Marvcus would shine in Pop Warner football.
“You’ve got the speed, the moves … running back is the right place for you son,” she would say.
“No, mom,” Marvcus would answer. “I want to play defense … just like you.”
Barbara Patton knew what she was talking about. As a 5-foot-4, 130-pound outside linebacker for the women’s professional Los Angeles Dandelions, on the roster for their 1973 debut season and staying around until 1976, she was a dandy role model.
“I was so little that I don’t remember much about her playing,” Marvcus would say. “All I remember is that she was always really excited on game day.”
“I could fly,” she said, “and I could hit.”
Marvcus was 7 when he posed with his 11-year-old sister Debbie for a 1974 Daily Breeze feature story in the People section — not the Sports section — on the life of a 32-year-old single working mom living in Inglewood who had a weekend hobby that gave her an outlet for her athletic nature.
Barbara heard about the Dandelions tryouts on the radio and talked her two sisters into joining her among the 350 candidates. Barbara was one of the 30 who made the cut.
“It was too rough for them,” she said of her sisters.
The Daily Breeze story pointed out how Marvcus “waits on the sidelines” watching her practice. Barbara’s mother also watched the kids as she practiced at Fairfax High and played home games at Long Beach Veterans Stadium, Santa Monica College or East L.A. College.
In one game where the Dandelions played in San Diego, Barbara said she a receiver so hard, “it split her helmet. It kind of shook me up a little bit, too.”
An Aug. 19, 1973 account of the Dandelions’ 25-0 win in Long Beach over Detroit noted that “the stellar defensive play by the Lion front four of Pam Brown, Barbara Patton, Sue Waldron and Janet Graffley stopped any offensive threat.”
Barbara said she would often remind Marvcus during his college and NFL days not to tackle with his arms, read the quarterback’s eyes… It was all the coach-speak she could pull from her experience.
“I’ll say, ‘Remember Marvcus, football is just like you’re in a war zone, you’re protecting your territory’,” said Barbara.
“Sometimes he tells me, ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, mom. I’m a pro football player.’
“I say, ‘Don’t forget, I was one too’.”
Marvcus has said his mother is “my biggest fan and my biggest critic. No matter what I’ve done she’s always been behind me and tried to help me in every way possible. When it comes to football, she really knows her stuff. It’s like having another coach.”
The Dad’s story
Marvcus Patton said several times over his career about how much he admired the way Barbara was both a mother and a father to him.
Even as his parents separated when he was very young, his dad very much kept in touch.
In August of 1976, Raymond Hicks was a 12-year veteran of the LAPD undercover narcotics unit working in the Venice division. He was 35 when he died in the line of duty during a raid in Inglewood.
A three-year Army veteran, Hicks received 21 departmental and citizen commendations during his career.
“I didn’t want to believe it at first,” Marvcus said of his father’s death. “I just kept thinking he would walk through that door. But as time went on I realized I had to accept things as they were. The thing I’ll always remember is that my dad was killed while trying to do the best job he could.”
Raymond Hicks’ death meant Marvcus’ education would be paid for by the Los Angeles Police Memorial Foundation. That included admission to UCLA.
“I grew up without a father and we all hear the stories about your chances in that situation,” said Marvcus, whose middle name is Raymond. “But I went to school and succeeded academically and that allowed me to play sports. Had I not gone to school and done well, I would have never gotten into UCLA. I never would have been playing football there. I use that as an example with kids. If you go to school, it opens up a lot of possibilities that you might otherwise not have.”
Before the 1993 Super Bowl, Los Angeles Daily News reporter Eric Noland talked to Patton about his father, who, at the time of his death, was preparing to go to law school.
“Honestly, you don’t really realize he’s a police officer, and how dangerous it is at the time,” Marvcus said. “As you get older, yeah. But 9 years old . . . and nothing had happened to make you aware of the dangers. I’m sure he would be proud of both what I did when I was going to school and also what I’m doing now. I’m sure he would be very proud of everything I’ve done so far.”
Noland spoke with Lt. Don Kitchen, a watch commander in the West Valley who had been Hicks’ partner for two years, and Det. Dave Harrison, working with Hicks in the Venice Division narcotics unit the night he was killed. Harrison and Kitchen are white. At Hicks’ funeral, a reporter approached Kitchen to ask about Hicks being one of the few black LAPD officers killed in the line of duty.
Kitchen: “I turned and said, ‘He wasn’t black. He was blue (as in his uniform). He was my partner.’ “
“What I remember most about Ray,” Harrison said, “is he never had a bad word to say about anybody. He never swore. He treated people with respect. He was the ideal policeman.”
Kitchen added: “I’ll tell you something unbelievable. Ray had an informant, who happened to be living with one of my informants. A couple of heroin addicts. After Ray was killed, they called me and said how terrible it was. ‘He always treated us fair. Can we come to the funeral? We know we’re just junkies and everything, but we want to come.’
“I had never heard of that before — snitches that a guy had put away (in jail) wanting to go to the funeral. But they came.”
Marvcus Patton said what got him through that trauma was his mother is “a very strong person. And I have a large surrounding family, extended relatives. We all stuck together. That helped me as a youngster, as well as the rest of the family, get over it.”
The history
There was no picking apart the Los Angeles Dandelions, curiously named after a flower/weed that often comes up as something unwanted on a green football turf.
The Dandelions, led by quarterback Jennifer Krehm, were the best known of all the women’s pro teams that played in Southern California history. Their rivals came in the form of the California Mustangs, based in the San Gabriel Valley from 1974 to ’76, playing at Citrus College in Glendora and practicing at La Salle High in Pasadena. There was also the Pasadena Roses playing at Azuza College with star quaterback/punter Naomi Malauulu.
In the mid-1980s as part of a revival of the women’s pro league, the Los Angeles Scandals played games at L.A. Valley College in Van Nuys.
Lyndsey D’Arcangelo, co-author of the 2021 book, “Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League,” explained in an interview: “The whole thought behind it was to create something like the Harlem Globetrotters, where they would travel as a troupe to different cities around the Rust Belt area and compete against men’s teams. From there, what he realized was that the women could actually play, and play well. Just think of this melting pot of women who had this one singular goal: to get the opportunity to play football, and they took it.”
Barbara Patton’s participation in the Los Angeles’ women’s football scene was an extension of what had been doing on decades earlier, just hardly noticed.
“History was made,” as noted in the “Hail Mary” book, when the first full-contact women’s football game was played at Gilmore Stadium in Los Angeles in October of 1939. The Chet Relph Hollywood Stars lost to the Marshall Clampett Amazons of Los Angeles, 12-6, in front of 2,500.
At this point in time, UCLA’s Jack Robinson was making a name for himself as a football star in the city.
This women’s football showcase, almost a decade before the NFL’s Rams moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles, used NFL rules and played four 12-minute quarters. Life Magazine and the Los Angeles Times covered it. Players were said to have worn regulation uniforms but had tennis shoes and an “undersized football.” Shirley Payne’s 45-yard interception return helped seal the win for the Amazons.
Life magazine noted: “It was no powder-puff battle. The girls were rough and tough. They kicked each other in the stomach, dirtied each other’s faces, tackled and blocked savagely, knocked four girls unconscious. And strangely enough they played good football, seldom fumbling or running away from their interference.”
A two-paragraph story in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen made note that the players actually were recruited from a women’s softball team.
As noted in “Hail Mary,” as well as Katie Taylor’s “Gridiron Invasion: The Hidden History of Women’s Football,” Los Angeles Times columnist Dick Hyland was far more condescending in the language he used in the days leading up to it — failing to cover it at all.
He wrote a week before the event: “I don’t know what all this feminine activity is supposed to prove in the world of sports. In fact, I’m wondering if the report doesn’t belong in the entertainment pages or over with the crime news.”
Women’s football, somewhat shelved during World War II, found a new cycle of interest in the late ’60s with the Women’s Professional Football League. It expanded in 1971 past its first four teams, including the Los Angeles franchise in its Western Division. By 1973, the league disbanded and would come back with the game name from 1999 to 2007.
The National Women’s Football League was born from that in 1974 and kept itself relevant through 1988, provided more opportunity. The Los Angeles Dandelions were a founding member of the new NWFL.
In 2023, two documentaries about the league appeared. “We Are The Troopers” focused on the Toledo Troopers of the WPFL and the seven titles that the team won combined with that league and playing in the National Women’s Football League. “The Herricanes” was a doc that allowed filmmaker Olivia Kuan to shine a light on the league’s existence — which included her mother, Basia, playing for the Houston Herricanes.
And about players making $25 a game? The documentary shed more light on that.
“Most have reported that never actually happened,” Kuan said about the payments. “It took everything they had just to keep the teams afloat. The players were dedicated to the sprot and their teammates without financial incentives. They did it for love of the game and for the many ways they grew as individuals.”
The Women’s Football Alliance, a semi-pro summer-based league started in 2009, has been the latest incarnation. It held its 2015 title game at L.A. Southwest College, and had at one time more than 60 teams. The Los Angeles Warriors were part of that of as a Southern California franchise in the league from 2017 to ‘18th. It started as the California Lynx, went to the Pacific Warriors and by 2024 were known as the Cali War, playing home games at Mira Costa High in Manhattan Beach. The team also had played home games at the Michelle and Barack Obama Sports Complex, once known as the Rancho Cienega Rec Center near Dorsey High School.
In 2022, the Los Angeles Legends appeared as part of the Women’s National Football Conference and playing games at Serra High in Gardena from April to May. It also had a girls’ and women’s flag squad as well as a tackle football roster.
We are tempted to overlook the Los Angeles Temptations, but since you didn’t ask …
Created for something called the Legends Football League, which was based on Ontario, the Temptations debuted at halftime of Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004 as part of something called the Lingerie Bowl. Models and actresses wearing lingerie with minimal gear included Playboy Playmate Nikki Ziering playing for Team Dream. They became the Los Angeles Temptations dreamed up to play in Lingerie Bowl II.
“What playing surface does the Lingerie Bowl use?” asked ESPN’s Jim Capel. “Natural grass, artificial turf or Jell-o? … And most importantly, should we refer to this as Lingerie Bowl I, Lingerie Bowl 2004 or Lingerie Bowl 38C?”
By 2009 and ’10, the Lingerie Football League somehow had developed an indoor season at the L.A. Sports Arena, before moving to Citizens Bank Arena in Ontario. The outdoor season was at the cavernous L.A. Coliseum. The league rebranded, moved around and somehow a team called the Los Angeles Black Storm emerged in something called the Extreme League, (aka, X League), billing itself as “a new era in women’s empowerment” with a 7-on-7 format on a 70-yard field.
“The X League will also be established as the highest echelon of women’s tackle football,” it boasted.
Soon enough, that was all a bust.
The rise of flag football for girls’ participation on the high school level has brought about a new plan for how this sport might look going forward.
Katie Taylor explained in an interview about her book “Gridiron Invasion” that her entry point into the sport was from stepping up as the manager of the Great Britain Men’s Flag Football team in England after setting up a mixed-gender flag team at Peter Symonds College.
“At one point I was mistaken for being the head coach’s wife … horrible,” she said.
Noting that the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles will have flag football as a medal sport for both men and women — at the urging of the NFL and its youth development programs as it becomes a global force — Taylor expects that the topic of women’s tackle football can also become part of the discussion again.
“When I was working with the GB men’s team, there were no women’s teams, and we eventually started one and we’ve seen the growth of it as well,” said Taylor, a senior lecturer in Sociology of Sport at Nottingham Trent University and chair of the British Society of Sports History.
“It’s naturally on the rise and the Olympics will make it more global. It should be booming at that point. How it continues after the Olympics, that’s where it needs to maintain momentum with leagues developed locally, world championships, on the college level. It all makes it acceptable for girls and women to play.
“The important way I can help is writing about its history. So many are incredulous they had not heard of it before. It all rung true when the book came out. It’s been very positive to see something that may have been a bit of a novelty at times in a heavily masculine world but it has a nearly 100-year history as well. It can show that girls football can be something and thrive.”
The topic is occasionally brought up: If the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. can dedicate space to how popular the All-American Women’s Professional Baseball League came into being in the 1940s, why can’t the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio acknowledge any history of the National Women’s Football League? Or go back to the 1940s when the women’s pro football games were being staged?
A display loosely called “Women’s Impact on Football” was put up in the Hall in 2022. It’s initial focus was how Jen Welter became the first woman to coach an NFL game in 2015 when she joined the Arizona Cardinals as an assistant coaching intern for training camp and the preseason. The display included her game-worn jersey from the Texas Revolution, which was the men’s indoor football team that signed Welter in 2014 to a contract. It made her first female non-kicker to play in a men’s professional football league. It doesn’t seem to highlight the fact she also played for the Womens Football Alliance’s Dallas Diamonds and the Independent Womens Football League’s Houston Dynamo.
When reminded that her son’s signing bonus as an NFL player was $2 million after he went from Buffalo to Washington, adding in the $6.8 million, four-deal deal that included a base salary of $900,000, Barbara Patton once said: “That’s why I want to come back in my next life as a man.”
Marvcus Patton, in an interview in the early 1990s while in Buffalo, talking about his football hertiage: “I’m definitely proud of my mother, just for the fact that she played and allowed me to play.”
The authors of “Hail Mary” note that and write on page 243:
“Though Marvcus never made it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, perhaps his mother still has a chance. The lack of recognition of the NWFL raises a legitimate question about the women who played. They are a significant part of football history … and should be honored as such … Imagine a display featuring pictures, memorabilia and information about NWLF teams and players that would serve as a reminder to football fans young and old that the NWFL existed, and a tribute to all the women who played so that their stories live on and are not overlooked and forgotten.
“Imagine what a moment it would be for (Barbara) Patton and Marvcus to witness together?”
Who else wore No. 49 in SoCal sports history? Make a case for:
Charlie Hough, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (1970 to 1980):
Best known: As he tried to master the knuckleball in 401 games for the Dodgers over 11 years, Hough would finish off 222 games and log 60 saves, including 18 and 21 for the Dodgers in their NL pennant winnings teams of 1976 and ’77. Converted into a starter at age 31 in 1979, the Dodgers were still trying to figure out what to do with him by the time they released him. A first baseman and third baseman at the Dodgers’ Single-A Ogden team under manager Tommy Lasorda in 1966, Hough was “the only guy I knew who could get into a race with a pregnant woman and finish third,”” said Lasorda. “I was playing first base, third base … and pitching, and I had to decide where he should play. As soon as I saw him, I knew he’d have to pitch.” Minor league coach Goldie Holt asked Hough to try the knuckeball. He would thrive under the tutelage of future Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm, who came onto the Dodgers roster for parts of two seasons, released at age 49. Hough started his career wearing No. 31 in 1970 but switched to No. 49 honor Wilhelm (who also wore No. 49 when he began), and that continued a trend for those around the MLB who committed to learning the knuckleball, including Dodgers pitcher Tom Candioitti (1992 to 1997).
Not well known: The 13 MLB seasons that Hough logged after he left the Dodgers were all as a starter. He twice leading the league in games started and complete games. Going to Texas in July of 1980 after the Dodgers gave up on him, Hough started 313 games for the Rangers over 11 seasons, plus 56 for the Chicago White Sox and 55 for Florida before he retired at age 48, compiling 107 complete games. He was the very first pitcher in Marlins history when the team made its 1993 debut. As a result, Hough recorded a 6-3 win over the Dodgers at Miami, defeating Orel Hershiser.
Tom Niedenfuer, Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher (1981 to 1987):
Best known: Game 5 of the 1985 National League Championship Series ended when Niedenfuer’s first pitch to Ozzie Smith was lined over the right field wall at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Two days later, Jack Clark crushed a Niedenfuer offering into the left-field pavilion at Dodger Stadium for a three-run, ninth-inning home run to erase a 5-4 deficit in Game 6, effectively ending the Dodgers’ season. “What can you do?”Niedenfuer said in a 2010 Los Angeles Times story. “It happened.” Two innings earlier, Niedenfuer struck out Clark on a fastball out of the strike zone after setting him up with several sliders. During the regular season, Niedenfuer had a career highs of 19 saves and 106 1/3 innings.
Not well known: Niedenfuer was nicknamed “Buffalo” because of the 7 1/2 size of the cap he wore.
Dennis Smith, USC football defensive back (1977 to 1980):
Best known: Pulling in 15 interceptions in his 45 games over four years at USC, Smith was part of two Rose Bowl teams and on the ’78 national championship team. Smith was All-Pac-10 for three seasons and the No. 15 overall pick in the 1981 NFL draft by Denver.
Not well known: Smith was a wide receiver and defensive back out at Santa Monica High, where he was the CIF Southern Section co-Player of the Year in 1976.
Charles Phillips, USC football safety (1972 to 1974):
Best known: Out of Blair High in Pasadena, Phillips set an NCAA record with 302 interception return yards with seven picks as a senior, leading to an All-American status on the second of his two Trojans’ national championship teams. During USC’s historic 55-24 victory over Notre Dame in 1974, he returned one of his three interceptions 58 yards for one of two touchdowns, earning the Theodore Gabrielson Award as the most outstanding player in the rivalry game that season. A second-round pick of the Oakland Raiders, Phillips played in Super Bowl XI.
Not well known: Phillips plucked two fumbles out of the air and returned them both for touchdowns against Iowa in 1974, putting his name in the USC record book for return yardage in a game, with 181, and the highest average-gain-per-return, at 90.5.
Sedrick Ellis, USC football defensive lineman (2005 to 2007):
Best known: Ellis’ three-year career at USC produced 142 tackles (75 solo, 29 for losses) and 17.5 sacks in 36 games as well as the Morris Trophy for top lineman in the Pac-10. In USC’s win over Michigan in the 2007 Rose Bowl, Ellis had seven tackles, a sack and a pass deflection. During his senior year he was voted Pac-10 Conference Defensive Player of the Year and was first-team All-American. New Orleans made Ellis the No. 7 overall pick in the 2008 NFL draft.
Not well known: Ellis came out of a Chino High program that won CIF titles in 2000 and ’01.
Carson Schwesinger, UCLA football linebacker (2021 to 2024):
Best known: From Oaks Christian High in Thousand Oaks, Schweisinger made it on the UCLA roster as a walk on. By the time he earned a scholarship and made it through his junior season, Schwesinger was a first-team All-Big Ten pick, a Bruins team captain, a finalist for the Butkus Award (top linebacker in the nation) and considered for the Burlsworth Trophy (top walk-on). Teammate Bryan Addison called him “Captain America.” All of this happened as he pursued a bio engineering major.
Not well known: After leading the nation in solo tackles with 90 and finishing third in all of college football in total tackles with a Big Ten best of 136, Schwesinger was the 33rd overall pick of the 2025 draft by the Cleveland Browns — the first player from UCLA or USC selected in the NFL draft.
We also have:
Tuli Tuipulotu, USC defensive lineman (2020 to 2022)
Tim Belcher, Los Angeles Dodgers (1987 to 1991)
Blake Treinen, Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher (2020 to present)
Rod Perry, Los Angeles Rams (1975 to 1982)
Jack Sanford, California Angels pitcher (1965 to 1967)
Anyone else worth nominating?
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